Quantum Physics

We study the forrelation problem: given a pair of n -bit boolean functions f and g , estimate the correlation between f and the Fourier transform of g . This problem is known to provide the largest possible quantum speedup in terms of its query complexity and achieves the landmark oracle separation between the complexity class BQP and the Polynomial Hierarchy. Our first result is a classical algorithm for the forrelation problem which has runtime O(n 2 n/2 ) . This is a nearly quadratic improvement over the best previously known algorithm. Secondly, we introduce a graph-based forrelation problem where n binary variables live at vertices of some fixed graph and the functions f,g are products of terms dscribing interactions between nearest-neighbor variables. We show that the graph-based forrelation problem can be solved on a classical computer in time O( n 2 ) for any bipartite graph, any planar graph, or, more generally, any graph which can be partitioned into two subgraphs of constant treewidth. The graph-based forrelation is simply related to the variational energy achieved by the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) with two entangling layers and Ising-type cost functions. By exploiting the connection between QAOA and the graph-based forrelation we were able to simulate the recently proposed Recurisve QAOA with two entangling layers and 225 qubits on a laptop computer.

Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment was conceived to illustrate the paradoxical nature of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the experiment, quantum light can exhibit either wave-like interference patterns or particle-like anti-correlations, depending upon the (possibly delayed) choice of the experimenter. A variant known as the quantum eraser uses entangled light to recover the lost interference in a seemingly nonlocal and retrocausal manner. Although it is believed that this behavior is incompatible with classical physics, here we show that the observed quantum phenomena can be reproduced by adopting a simple deterministic detector model and supposing the existence of a random zero-point electromagnetic field.

We study quantum annealing in the quantum Ising model coupled to a thermal environment. When the speed of quantum annealing is sufficiently slow, the system evolves following the instantaneous thermal equilibrium. This quasistatic and isothermal evolution, however, fails near the end of annealing because the relaxation time grows infinitely, therefore yielding excess energy from the thermal equilibrium. We develop a phenomenological theory based on this picture and derive a scaling relation of the excess energy after annealing. The theoretical results are numerically confirmed using a novel non-Markovian method that we recently proposed based on a path-integral representation of the reduced density matrix and the infinite time evolving block decimation. In addition, we discuss the crossover between the adiabatic and quasistatic regimes and propose experiments on the D-Wave quantum annealer.

Sampling from probability distributions of quantum circuits is a fundamentally and practically important task which can be used to demonstrate quantum supremacy using noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices. In the present work, we examine classical simulability of sampling from the output photon-number distribution of linear-optical circuits composed of random beam splitters with equally distributed squeezed vacuum states and single-photon states input. We provide efficient classical algorithms to simulate linear-optical random circuits and show that the algorithms' error is exponentially small up to a depth less than quadratic in the distance between sources using a classical random walk behavior of random linear-optical circuits. Notably, the average-case depth allowing an efficient classical simulation is larger than the worst-case depth limit, which is linear in the distance. Besides, our results together with the hardness of boson sampling give a lower-bound on the depth for constituting global Haar-random unitary circuits.

We propose three constructions of classically verifiable non-interactive proofs (CV-NIP) and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs and arguments (CV-NIZK) for QMA in various preprocessing models. - We construct an information theoretically sound CV-NIP for QMA in the secret parameter model where a trusted party generates a quantum proving key and classical verification key and gives them to the corresponding parties while keeping it secret from the other party. Alternatively, we can think of the protocol as one in a model where the verifier sends an instance-independent quantum message to the prover as preprocessing. - We construct a CV-NIZK for QMA in the secret parameter model. It is information theoretically sound and zero-knowledge. - Assuming the quantum hardness of the leaning with errors problem, we construct a CV-NIZK for QMA in a model where a trusted party generates a CRS and the verifier sends an instance-independent quantum message to the prover as preprocessing. This model is the same as one considered in the recent work by Coladangelo, Vidick, and Zhang (CRYPTO '20). Our construction has the so-called dual-mode property, which means that there are two computationally indistinguishable modes of generating CRS, and we have information theoretical soundness in one mode and information theoretical zero-knowledge property in the other. This answers an open problem left by Coladangelo et al, which is to achieve either of soundness or zero-knowledge information theoretically. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first dual-mode NIZK for QMA in any kind of model.

Clustering is grouping of data by the proximity of some properties. We report on the possibility of increasing the efficiency of clustering of points in a plane using artificial quantum neural networks after the replacement of the two-level neurons called qubits represented by the spins S = 1/2 by the three-level neurons called qutrits represented by the spins S = 1. The problem has been solved by the slow adiabatic change of the Hamiltonian in time. The methods for controlling a qutrit system using projection operators have been developed and the numerical simulation has been performed. The Hamiltonians for two well-known cluster-ing methods, one-hot encoding and k-means ++, have been built. The first method has been used to partition a set of six points into three or two clusters and the second method, to partition a set of nine points into three clusters and seven points into four clusters. The simulation has shown that the clustering problem can be ef-fectively solved on qutrits represented by the spins S = 1. The advantages of clustering on qutrits over that on qubits have been demonstrated. In particular, the number of qutrits required to represent data points is smaller than the number of qubits by a factor of log2 N / log3 N . Since, for qutrits, it is easier to partition the data points into three clusters rather than two ones, the approximate hierarchical procedure of data partition-ing into a larger number of clusters is accelerated. At the exact data partition into more than three clusters, it has been proposed to number the clusters by the numbers of states of the corresponding multi-spin subsys-tems, instead of using the numbers of individual spins. This reduces even more the number of qutrits (N log3 K instead of NK ) required to implement the algorithm.

We analyze Lindblad-Gorini-Kossakowski-Sudarshan-type generators for selected periodically driven open quantum systems. All these generators can be obtained by temporal coarse-graining procedures, and we compare different coarse-graining schemes. Similar to for undriven systems, we find that a dynamically adapted coarse-graining time, effectively yielding non-Markovian dynamics by interpolating through a series of different but invididually Markovian solutions, yields the best results among the different coarse-graining schemes, albeit at highest computational cost.

Quantum coherence is one of the key features that fuels applications for which quantum mechanics exceeds the power of classical physics. This explains the considerable efforts that were undertaken to quantify coherence via quantum resource theories. An application of the resulting framework to concrete technological tasks is however largely missing. Here, we address this problem and connect the ability of an operation to detect or create coherence to the performance of interferometric experiments.

We explore entanglement generation between multiple optically levitated nanospheres interacting with a common optical cavity via the Coherent Scattering optomechanical interaction. We derive the many-particle Hamiltonian governing the unitary evolution of the system and show that it gives rise to quantum correlations among the various partitions of the setup, following a non-Markovian dynamics of entanglement birth, death and revivals. We also consider the effects of coupling the system to external environments and show that under reasonable experimental conditions entanglement between the mechanical modes can survive even at room temperature. Its dependence upon the number of nanoparticles, their initial temperature and coupling strength is studied. A numerical toolbox to simulate the closed and open dynamics of Gaussian optomechanical states and their informational measures is developed.

Over the last several decades, entangled photon pairs generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion processes in both second-order and third-order nonlinear optical materials have been intensively studied for various quantum features such as Bell inequality violation and anticorrelation. In an interferometric scheme, anticorrelation results from photon bunching based on randomness when entangled photon pairs coincidently impinge on a beam splitter. Compared with post-measurement-based probabilistic confirmation, a coherence version has been recently proposed using the wave nature of photons. Here, the origin of quantum features in a coupled interferometric scheme is investigated using pure coherence optics. In addition, a deterministic method of entangled photon-pair generation is proposed for on-demand coherence control of quantum processing.